Transcript

1.
COORDINATION OF HOUSEKEEPING WITH OTHER DEPARTMENTSNo individual department in any hotel can work in isolation. A willingness to cooperateand coordinate, with the assistance of efficient methods of communication, is essentialif the establishment is to run smoothly. The housekeeping department is just one of thedepartments in a hotel working towards the satisfaction of the guests, and each department isdependent on others for information and/or services if its work is to be accomplished efficiently.Frictions between departments must be kept to a minimum and there should be close inter-departmental liaison.All departments depicted in the above picture need to co ordinate with housekeeping, and viceversa. Within the rooms division, housekeeping primarily coordinates with the front office andmaintenance. Amongst all coordination relationships in hotels, the most important one is thatbetween the front office, housekeeping, and maintenance (see Figure ). Hotels depend on thistriangle to create a perfect image. The ultimate aim of this trio is to provide the guests with acomfortable room and a friendly yet courteous service. This must be provided economically andefficiently because a room that is not sold for a day is loss of revenue that cannot be retrieved. Coordination with Front OfficeRooms are of chief concern to the front office and housekeeping departments. It isimportant for the departments to continuously exchange information on room status. Thefront office must provide lists for expected arrivals and departures for the day in advance,and notify housekeeping of actual arrivals and departures as and when they occur. The

2.
front office is not allowed to assign guestrooms until the rooms have been cleaned,inspected, and released by the housekeeping department. Each night, a front officeassistant produces an occupancy report, also called the night report. This report listsrooms occupied that night and indicates guests who are expected to check out thefollowing day. The executive housekeeper procures and consults this list early the nextmorning and schedules the occupied rooms for cleaning. As guests check out, the frontoffice notifies housekeeping. Housekeeping ensures thatthese rooms are given top priority in servicing, so that clean rooms are available for sale. Ifa guest checks out before the stated departure date, the front office must informhousekeeping that the room is no longer a stayover, but is now a check-out. To ensureefficient rooming of guests, both housekeeping and the front office must inform each otherof changes in a rooms status. Knowing whether a room is occupied, vacant, on change, outof order (000), under repair, or similar, is important for proper roomsmanagement.A flow of information in the reverse direction is also necessary, especially by way of theroom status report or the housekeeping status report. At the end of a shift, thehousekeeping department prepares the housekeeping status report, which indicates thephysical count as seen by housekeeping, which is to be tallied by the reception board. Thisreport indicates the current housekeeping status of each room. The front office must beinformed about rooms that are ready for occupation and those which are out of order orunder repair. The room status report is compared with the front offices occupancy report,and discrepancies are brought to the attention of the front office manager. ,A room status discrepancy is a situation in which the housekeeping departmentsdescription of a rooms status differs from the room status information being used by thefront office to assign guestrooms. As unoccupied rooms are cleaned and inspected, thefloor supervisors call the housekeeping desk attendant, who in turn informs the front officeof rooms ready. The front office then updates the rooms status to vacant and ready.Promptly informing the front office of the housekeeping status of rooms is a tremendousaid in getting guests who arrive early registered, especially during high- occupancy orsold-out periods.Keeping room status information up-to-date requires close coordination between-the frontdesk and housekeeping. The two common systems used for tracking current room statusare the manual Whitney room-rack systems and the computerized room status systems.The front desk may use a Whitney room rack to track the status of rooms. In this system, aroom-rack slip containing the guests name and other relevant information is preparedduring the registration process. This slip is placed in the room- rack slot corresponding tothe assigned room number.The presence of a room-rack slip in the slot indicates that the room is occupied. When theguest checks out, the rack slip is removed and the rooms status now indicates on change,which means the room is in need of housekeeping services before it can be registered to anarriving guest. Housekeeping meanwhile attends to the unoccupied room and notifies thefront desk, which updates the status to vacant and ready.In a computerized room status system, as soon as a guest checks out, the front desk entersthe departure into the computer. This information is received by housekeeping via the

3.
computer terminal located in the housekeeping department. When housekeeping is donewith the cleaning and inspection of the room, it enters this information into its departmentalterminal. This information is received on the front office computer terminal and it puts theroom on sale. This system works best when the computer system is directly connected tothe guestroom telephone system. With such a network, supervisors can inspect roomscleaned by attendants and, if they are found ready for occupancy, enter a code on theguestroom telephone to change the room status to cleaned and ready in the hotelscomputer system. Within seconds, the updated room status is displayed on the screen of afront desk computer terminal.Sharing information on occupancy levels helps forecast occupancy for the year and makesit easier to draw up a budget, establish par stock levels, and estimate required staff strength.It also helps to gear renovations and spring cleaning to low-occupancy periods, therebypreventing loss of revenue.The housekeeping department also receives other important information from the frontoffice, which require special attention:VIPs in the house This information is essential so that the staff can take a little extra care andkeener precautions in cleaning and supervising VIP rooms.Groups in the house The group rooming list must be provided before the groups arrival asgroups tend to move together in terms of arrival, departure, sightseeing tours, and meals.Their rooms need to be readied together in view of strict time parameters. It is alsoimportant to intimate room changes, so that items left behind by guests may be handedover, extras retrieved, and laundry delivered. Group rooming lists enable the department toorganize their work and have the groups rooms ready on time. This is particularly crucialwhen the turnover is high and rooms are experiencing back-to-back occupancy.Crew in the house Under normal circumstances, airline crews are allotted a given set ofrooms on a particular floor. However, sometimes, the arrival of a crew and the departure ofanother crew from the same airline may overlap. In such circumstances, it is important forthe allotted rooms to be cleaned within a short period of time. Also, because of odd timingsfor international flights, these crew rooms may display a do not disturb (DND) card attimes when other guests are normally out, which the housekeeping schedule must take intoaccount.Flowers Sometimes the management extends its compliments to a guest with a specialgesture of a flower arrangement in the room as recognition of the importance of a person.This requirement of flower arrangements for certain guests is conveyed to housekeeping bythe front office on a daily basis. Apart from the communications mentioned, the front officeneeds to depend on housekeeping for the provision of clean uniforms to its staff. Coordination with Maintenance DepartmentThe maintenance departrnent is responsible for the provision of engineering facilitiesthat contribute to the comfort of guests and increase the efficiency of staff. Thehousekeeping department depends on maintenance to keep things in order. Whilecarrying out their scheduled work, housekeeping employees may find some deficienciesin the hotel facilities, such as faulty electrical plugs, dripping faucets, leaking pipes, ormalfunctioning air-conditioning units or we cisterns. The housekeeping department

4.
often takes the first steps in maintenance functions for which the maintenance departmentis ultimately responsible. However, these deficiencies and faults should be immediatelyreported to maintenance. A need for urgent repairs is reported to maintenance overtelephone and these requests are usually dealt with promptly if the rapport between thetwo departments is good.There are various heads under which maintenance work is done:Electrical work Air conditioning and heating; fused bulbs; lights and lamps that arenot functioning; defective plugs and plug points; short circuits; and faulty geysers,refrigerators, and mini bars fall under this category.Boiler work This is necessary to maintain a supply of hot water to guestrooms.Mechanical work This entails repair or replacement of any faulty equipment, such asvacuum cleaners, ice-cube machines, and so on.Plumbing work This deals with faulty faucets, showers, drainage systems, water closets,and so on.Civil work Any masonry work comes under this head.Carpentry work Broken or shaky furniture, mirrors and cupboards in less than peakcondition, and fresh woodwork are all part of this.To look at it another way, in terms of frequency, urgency, and complexity of the job,there are three levels of maintenance work.Routine maintenance : This involves maintenance activities that relate to the generalupkeep of the hotel. They occur on a regular basis, daily or weekly, and require minimaltraining or skills. These activities do not call for the making out of a formal work order,and no records are maintained for them. Most of these routine maintenance activities arecarried out by housekeeping. Proper care of many surfaces and materials by housekeepingpersonnel is the first step in the overall maintenance programme for the property. Examplesof such activities are the replacement of fused light bulbs, polishing of furniture, cleaningof windows and floors, and so on.Preventive maintenance This is a systematic approach to maintenance in which situations areidentified and corrected on a regular basis to control costs and keeplarger problems from occurring. It involves inspections, minor corrections, and initiationof work orders.Inspections During the normal course of their duties, housekeeping personnel carry outinspections of most areas. Room attendants and supervisors regularly check for leakingfaucets, chipped caulking around bathroom fixtures, fused bulbs, AC malfunctions, andso on.Minor corrections Problems of a greater magnitude are avoided if minor repairs are attendedto promptly. If communication between housekeeping and maintenance is efficient, minorrepairs will be rectified by the maintenance department even as the room attendant iscleaning the guestroom.Initiation of work orders Preventive maintenance sometimes identifies problems that arebeyond the limited scope of minor corrections. The necessary work is then referred to themaintenance department through a formal work-order system. The chief maintenanceofficer or the chief engineer then schedules this maintenance work to be done.Scheduled maintenance This involves maintenance work initiated by a work order. Workorders are key elements in the communication and coordination between housekeepingand maintenance.The procedure for scheduled maintenance is described in this section. The moment a

5.
housekeeping personnel detects a problem that requires attention from maintenance, shecalls the housekeeping control desk, stating the nature of the problem, the kind ofassistance required, and the location where it is required. The control desk fills out a workorder form (see Exhibit ) in triplicate, each copy being of a different colour. One copy issent to the executive housekeeper and two copies to maintenance. The chief engineerkeeps one of these copies and gives the other to the tradesperson assigned to do the repair.When the job is completed, a copy of the tradespersons completed work order is sent tothe executive housekeeper for acknowledgement of work satisfactorily completed. If thiscopy is not sent to the executive housekeeper within an appropriate period of time,housekeeping issues another work order, which signals maintenance to provide a statusreport on the requested repair.Sample Work Order Form Hotel XYZ MAINTENANCE WORK ORDER FORM Time……….Date…………… Check (X) indicates unsatisfactory condition By……………………………. Explain Check in remarks section. Location……………………... Bedroom Problem……………………… ( ) Walls ( ) Woodwork ( ) Doors ………………………………. ( ) Ceiling ( ) Television ( ) Light ………………………………. ( ) Floors ( ) AC unit ( ) Blinds ………………………………. ( ) Windows ( ) Drapes Assigned to………………….. Remarks ……………………………………………… Date Compl………………….. ………………………………………………………... Time spent…………………… Bathroom Completed by………………... ( ) Faucets ( )Drains ( ) Shower Remarks……………………… ( ) Lights ( ) Wallpapers ( ) Paints ………………………………... ( ) Tiles ( ) Glass ( ) Door ………………………………… ( ) Accessories ( ) Window ………………………………… Remarks …………………………………………………. Nowadays, many hotels install a computerized maintenance management system(CMMS) to catapult them from the strategy colloquially called bust n fix to one ofproactive maintenance.Engineering and maintenance departments in most hotels keep records of all equipmentoperated by housekeeping personnel. Equipment data cards contain basic informationabout these pieces of equipment. The purpose is to provide documentation of allmaintenance activity on a given piece of equipment.On the part of the housekeeping department, its personnel should cooperate withmaintenance by getting room doors unlocked promptly when repairs are being done.Housekeeping should also have maintenance rooms already stripped when redecorationis to take place and should have furniture to be removed for repair appropriately labelled. Coordination with Security DepartmentThe coordination here is mainly concerned with the prevention of fire and thefts andthe safekeeping of keys and lost property. There are so many security hazards on thefloors that this liaison is particularly important, and the housekeeper cooperates by

6.
endeavouring to see that housekeeping staff are aware of the hazards. Housekeepingpersonnel should also report anything of a suspicious nature immediately to the securitystaff. A hotel guestroom should be the most private of places and the hotel staff mustensure their guests privacy and security. However, a guest may take advantage of thisprivacy and may be engaged in certain illegal activities such as gambling, smuggling,and so on. Housekeeping personnel have to be alert to this risk and seek the securitydepartments intervention if necessary. The security department is responsible forconducting training sessions on handling emergency situations for the staff. For example,they conduct fire drills to train staff to gear up in a fire emergency. Coordination with Food and beverage department The food and beverage (F&B) department consists of both the service staff as well as thekitchen staff. The coordination of housekeeping with the restaurants and banquet hallsis mainly concerned with the provision oflinen and uniforms. The linen room supervisor,under the supervision of the executive housekeeper, needs to have sufficient stock ofclean napery to meet the demands of the F&B departments restaurant and banquetfunctions. On his/her part, the restaurant manager should ensure that the time set forthe exchange of linen is respected; that linen is not lost or misused; and that intimationof forthcoming banquet functions is conveyed to housekeeping well in advance. Besidesextra/special linen, housekeeping may also have to arrange for flower decorations forbanquets.Coordination between the two departments becomes particularly necessary in thecase of room service, so that friction does not arise over matters such as waiters notcollecting trays from guestrooms or room service staff leaving soiled trays in the corridorsor causing extra work through careless spills on the carpet.In many hotels, housekeeping also looks after pest control in restaurants, kitchens,and stores attached to them. Special cleaning of these areas calls for coordination withthe housekeeping department. Both restaurant and kitchen staff require clean uniformon a daily basis, for which too they need to communicate with housekeeping. Provisionof staff meals for housekeeping personnel, on the other hand, is the responsibility of thekitchen staff. Coordination with StoresCoordination with stores ensures the availability of day-to-day necessities of house-keeping. Larger hotels have a store attached to the housekeeping department that stockslinen, supplies, and so on. Smaller hotels may stock them in the general store, exceptfor linen, which is sent to the housekeeping department on purchase. Communicationwith stores is by way of a requisition form, which housekeeping sends to stores when itrequires certain items. The format shown in Exhibit on the next page may be used. Coordination with PersonneL DepartmentHousekeeping coordinates with the personnel department for recruitment of house-keeping staff; managing their salaries and wages; addressing indiscipline; followingthrough grievance procedures; issuing identity cards for employees; running inductionprogrammes; maintaining locker facilities; completing income tax formalities; effectingtransfers, promotions, appraisals, and exit formalities; procuring trainees; and organizingtraining sessions.

8.
Coordination with Sales and MarketingThe sales and marketing department informs housekeeping of the occupancy forecastfor the entire year, which is broken up monthwise. This enables housekeeping to budgetfor the necessary expenses. An important contribution of the housekeeping staff tohotel sales is ensuring that repeat business is obtained by providing the level of cleanlinessand service that meets or exceeds guest expectations. The sales and marketing teamalso have to depend on housekeeping for their uniforms. Two things are certain in thehotel business: no matter how many guests a salesperson brings in the door, ifhousekeeping does not execute its function with excellence, the guests will not be comingback. Vice versa, no matter how well-kept the rooms, if the sales staff do not bringpotential guests to the hotel, occupancy falls. Coordination with LaundryThis applies when the laundry is under the supervision and control of a laundry manager.Without clean linen, the room attendants simply cannot operate. During periods of fulloccupancy, the housekeeper needs a fast turnaround of linen from the laundry, butshould not always be making an emergency demand for them. As far as possible, thehousekeeper should stick to the schedule for the laundry. In return, the laundry shouldprovide an acceptable standard of service with regard to laundering. Housekeepingalso needs to coordinate with the laundry with regard to housekeeping employeesuniforms and those of other departments as well.